


no matter how lonely

by Vorpal_Sword



Series: the soft animal of your body [9]
Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Leverage
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemons, Episode: s01e01 The Nigerian Job, First Meetings, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:02:28
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25021348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vorpal_Sword/pseuds/Vorpal_Sword
Summary: Three thieves who work alone. One grieving father in an airport bar. And one con artist in the spotlight. Eventually, they will become a crew, a pack, a family. Right now, there's just one job to do.Or, The Nigerian Job, with daemons.
Series: the soft animal of your body [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1483046
Comments: 87
Kudos: 189





	1. Parker

**Author's Note:**

> Title, like the series title and other works in this series, from Wild Geese, by Mary Oliver:
> 
> Whoever you are, no matter how lonely  
> the world offers itself to your imagination,  
> calls out to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--  
> over and over announcing your place  
> in the family of things.

Parker works alone. 

“Don’t you want someone to watch your back?” a different thief had asked them once, as though with the nearly 360 degree vision of dragonfly-eyes they were not more than capable of watching their own back, as though they had not uncovered evidence that he’d planned to betray them when they had cased his poorly-hidden hideaway that morning. Parker framed him for their next three big thefts and went cheerfully on their way. There’s pretty much only one thing that could convince them to work with other people, and it’s gotta have at least six zeroes. 

So for $300,000, Parker makes an exception. Not such an exception that they neglected to plot four different escape routes as well as a way to get the merchandise on their own, but enough of an exception to find themself taking instructions from Nathan Ford, of all people, standing on a roof with two strangers.

Well. _On_ a roof, anyway. 

The hacker has cool toys, and Parker recognizes a certain twitchiness in the raccoon’s paws from the way their own human-hands react whenever there’s something shiny nearby. Or when they’re stressed. Or when they haven’t jumped off anything tall recently. Parker wonders if the raccoon-man is nervous or excited or something else, the way those paws are twitching. 

(There are definite advantages to having two sets of hands. Parker misses being able to shift, but usefulness of hands or not, they would not have wanted to settle as anything else, no matter what Archie might think.)

“You’re not as useless as you look,” the other man tells the hacker. His daemon, a wolf of some kind, flicks one ear back, her gaze darting around the perimeter, not looking at the others. Parker approves. What’s the point of having two sets of eyes if you don’t use them to keep watch? 

“I don’t even know what you _do,”_ raccoon-guy says. This is, of course, ridiculous. Even if Parker had not known Eliot Spencer by reputation (which they do, Parker pays attention to that kind of thing because you never know who you might run into in a vault, and Spencer has a Reputation with a capital R), they would have recognized him as a hitter. What else would a wolf-man be?

“Can we have one?” Parker asks, flipping down to look closer at the surprisingly small comms. 

“Baby, you can have the whole box,” the hacker winks. Parker knows. They could have taken the box from the hacker’s bag on the way up here, and he wouldn’t have noticed till now. Is the wink an acknowledgment of their skill or something else? Whatever. There are more important concerns right now. They select a single comm from the box, fitting it smoothly into their ear as the boys exchange barbs.

Parker checks over the rig with dragonfly eyes and human hands, knowing precisely how everything is supposed to feel. “Last time we used this rig, Paris, 2003,” they murmur, running their fingers over the soft material. It’s part reminiscence, part bait. 

“You talking about the Caravaggio?” Ford asks on cue. Parker is faintly disappointed that Ford proved so easy to distract. He’s supposed to be better than that. They don’t answer. They have a jump to prepare for. At least Ford refocuses relatively quickly.

“You’re precisely why I work alone,” the hitter tells the hacker. 

All this _chatter_ is why Parker works alone. That, and someone else giving them instructions, when they only trust themself with their safety.

Case in point: Ford begins a countdown, but he can’t feel what they can, on those sensitive gossamer wings. The wind has changed. It’s at exactly the right speed and direction for this jump, and it won’t last another ten seconds. 

“Hey, relax, we know what we’re doing,” the hitter snaps at Ford. Parker distantly appreciates the vote of confidence as they leap off the building, both bodies diving together. The wind tastes like freedom. They have no patience for Ford’s impatience. 

“He don’t want to be our pal,” the hacker observes. On this point, at least, Parker can understand Ford’s perspective. They are not here to be “pals” either. They are here to get paid. They are also here to dangle upside-down twenty-two stories high. Seriously, they have the best job.

"That's twenty pounds of crazy in a five pound bag," they hear through the comm. Silly, they think. Dragonflies weigh only a few ounces.

“Vibration detectors are on,” they announce.

“No cutting, Parker, use the binary,” Ford orders, as though they are not fully capable of cutting without setting off the vibration detectors. Parker trusts their skill more than any string of ones and zeros.

It’s still a sheer delight to release the rig, gliding through the hole, careful not to brush the sharp alarmed edge of glass, and go to the control room. Binary is confusing, but Parker can handle wires easily enough. The elevator starts to move. The nagging in their ear abruptly morphs into startled gasps as the boys register the movement. They wiggle their thorax in amusement and turn to pull up the security footage. 

"They don't see a thing," Parker says with the smug certainty of someone who really does have eyes on the back of their head. 

"Alright, guys, showtime," Ford announces as Parker lets the others off the elevator. So _dramatic_ , that man. Jobs aren't shows. Parker puts a lot of effort into not being seen. There's a reason their rep is as a ghost. They're a dragonfly, landing so lightly it barely makes a ripple before flitting off. Figures a dog would want more attention. 

“You got any chatter on their frequencies?” Ford asks.

“No, why?”

“There’s eight listed on the duty roster, but only four on the guard posts.”

Parker blinks at the footage. “We can’t even tell how many guys are in the room, how can you tell who’s who?”

“Haircuts, Parker,” Ford says. “Count the haircuts.”

Something goes _ping_ inside Parker, like the first time they met Archie. “We would have missed that,” they say with their dragonfly-mouth. They don’t mean to say it at all, but sometimes things slip out. Now that they’re looking, it’s obvious what Ford means.

They don’t have time to dwell on the lesson. Apparently it’s the _playoffs_ and apparently that means enough to normal people for them to alter their scheduled walk-throughs, which Parker thinks is frankly rude of both them and the football teams. 

There are guards coming, mostly dogs again, and why are so many people _dogs_ , don't they have any respect for Parker's feelings? They take a vicious delight in jamming the frequencies, messing with the dogs' sharp hearing as well as the humans' radios. 

The hacker is muttering to his machine while Ford gives the hitter instructions. Parker reviews their escape route, but they don’t have the merchandise. There’s a reason they don’t generally take jobs where the loot is data, the same reason why the hacker is present, even if he seems a bit slow on the uptake. Spencer has enough of a reputation, and Ford seems confident enough, that they decide to give it another two minutes before taking exit plan number three. Plus, they really badly want to get paid, and that won’t happen without the data.

"We ain't nobody's bait," the hacker protests. There's an accompanying squeak that must be from the raccoon, though Parker can't make out any words. They aren't sure what to think of a person who can say two different things at the same time but can't recognize a hitter on sight. Whatever. No time for reflection. Ford only has another minute before Parker is a whisper on the wind. 

Forty-one seconds into Parker’s countdown, the comms fill with the unmistakable sounds of fists against flesh, and a low growl that seems to come from Spencer-the-wolf. Forty-five seconds into the countdown, everything is silent.

“That’s what I do,” Spencer says, with the kind of confidence Parker appreciates, confidence that is demonstrably justified. They wish they had seen the fight. 

There's a low laugh from the hacker as the door to the server room swings open. It's a laugh Parker recognizes, though they generally save it for rooms full of gold or cash rather than glowing green lights, but there's no accounting for taste, as Archie would say. Now that he’s gotten access to his precious computers, Hardison works fast, especially with two sets of hands to type with. It’s another kind of joyful efficiency that Parker appreciates. 

But now—“We can’t go up,” Parker tells the others. _Parker_ could go up, if necessary—the vents are not locked down—but there’s no way the boys will be able to make that climb.

“Every man for himself,” Spencer says.

Hardison snorts. “Go ahead, I’m the one with the merchandise,” he says, as though that were not the primary reason Parker is still in this building. 

“Yeah, well, we’re the one with an exit,” Parker tells them. It’ll probably involve Spencer having to punch some people, and it’ll mean the police get called sooner than Parker would prefer, but there’s a service entrance out back that’s only got two guys on it, according to the schedule. 

“And I’m the one with a plan,” Ford announces. “Now, I know you _children_ don’t play well with others, but I need you to keep it together for exactly seven more minutes. Now, get to the elevator, and head down.” 

Parker isn’t sure they were ever a child. Parker is very sure they have never played well with others. 

But Parker remembers the haircuts, and Paris, and the work it took to evade Nathan Ford. They head to the elevator, stripping off their clothes as they move.

Parker hates this plan, hates these foreign hands _touching_ them, no matter how gentle Hardison's human hands are against their cheek. Spencer fastens a brace around their leg while his daemon watches, and they hate that too, the extra weight that will slow them down.

(The rumors had said Spencer had a wolf daemon. There’s something about the shape of her muzzle that looks off. That looks _familiar_ , in a way they are careful not to think about too closely. But Parker is now sure that Spencer’s daemon is part husky.) 

There’s two and a half more minutes left of Ford’s seven when the elevator bell rings. Parker can handle this for that long. They calculate that, in the worst case, if they throw the cane at the nearest guard and slide under the security fences, they can be out the door four minutes before the fastest possible cop arrival time. Knowing that gives them the confidence to limp out of the elevator. 

But to their surprise, none of that is necessary. It’s almost funny, how quickly the guard switches from aggressive to awkward to helpful and apologetic. 

They toss the cane to Hardison, instead. When he catches it smoothly, they feel the same satisfaction as when their gear works perfectly, knowing they can depend on it. 

“Anyone else notice how hard we rocked last night?” Hardison asks as he delivers the data. His human face gets all crinkly around the eyes, and the raccoon-shape is licking her paws. 

“Yeah, well, one show only, no encores,” Spencer growls, which Parker understands as a pretty clear _yes_. 

They always feel warm and energized after a successful job, and they can’t wait to see all those pretty zeroes show up in their account. They don't usually feel quite this good, but Parker has no intention of sticking around to allow these people another opportunity to stab them in the back. “We already forgot your names,” they say. 

“It’s Leia,” Hardison tells them. Parker blinks. It was the raccoon-shape that spoke, and the human-shape twists to look at the masked face on his shoulder. His eyes go wide, like he’s surprised at himself. 

“Of course it is,” Ford mutters, though his eyebrows had also gone up when the raccoon spoke, and the very tip of the bloodhound’s tail twitched. 

“It was kinda cool, being on the same side,” Hardison presses.

“No,” Ford claims, “We are _not_ on the same side, I am not a thief.” 

This is clearly absurd. “You are now,” Parker points out. They cannot resist needling. “Come on, Nathan, tell the truth. Didn’t you have a bit of fun, playing the Black King instead of the White Knight, just this once?” They had… researched… Nathan Ford, back when he was an insurance agent who came irritatingly close to catching them. They know how much he clings to his ideals of Good and Evil, when the world is a rainbow mess of colors. And Ford, like Archie, has always been a fan of chess. 

Ford turns away without speaking, but the bloodhound’s tail wags, and that's answer enough. Parker grins to themself.

It had been a good day. 

(Or it was, until the money fails to materialize in their account, and Parker is out for blood.) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Daemons in this chapter: 
> 
> Parker- Also Parker, a Globe Skimmer Dragonfly. Dragonflies have extraordinary eyesight and are fast, agile, flyers and hunters. Globe skimmers have the largest range of any species of dragonfly, and have one of the farthest known migrations of any insect. They can fly for hours without perching, as well as flying higher than any other species of dragonfly. They are gold in color.
> 
> Hardison- Leia, a North American Raccoon. Raccoons are highly adaptable and intelligent, thriving in forests and in urban areas. They are commonly associated with theft and trickery, in part because of their behavior, but also because of the mask-like pattern of stripes on their faces. They have extremely dexterous paws, which Leia uses to type on a modified computer. 
> 
> Nate- Brigid, a Bloodhound. Bloodhounds have extraordinarily keen olfactory senses and a tenacious tracking instinct. They are used around the world for tracking missing people and criminals.
> 
> Eliot- Boudicca, a Wolfdog. A hybrid of a grey wolf and a Siberian husky, Bud is a powerful hunter with a strong pack instinct. Wolfdogs tend to be larger than wolves, and are often even dangerous to humans than wolves because they are less afraid of people. They are fiercely loyal and difficult to tame. A hybrid daemon indicates a dichotomy in spirit.


	2. Eliot

It was supposed to be a walkaway.

Eliot did not want to see any of them again. Not Hardison, with his nonstop chatter and fidgety raccoon, not Parker, with her hovering dragonfly and inability to follow orders, and certainly not Nate Ford, who trailed a cloud of misery and guilt so thick it was amazing his bloodhound could smell anything through it, not to mention the stench of alcohol.

But Eliot _needs_ that three hundred grand, he has debts to pay off. And he hates leaving a loose end. If one of the others has betrayed him, he is going to make damn sure it won’t happen again, no matter how satisfying it might have been to work with people who are actually _competent_ at what they do.

So he goes to the warehouse, Boudicca pacing just ahead of him. “Smells like fuel,” she says, nose twitching.

“It’s an old aircraft facility, of course it smells like fuel,” he reminds her. She says nothing but wrinkles her muzzle towards the left in their personal code for _this way_. Eliot follows her around the corner to where the hacker is pacing, bickering with his daemon.

“ _I_ did my part, it’s gotta be one of the others.”

“Don’t be stupid, Alec,” the daemon says, and Eliot is not at all envious of their easy trust, nor charmed by the low rumble of her voice. “I liked them,” she adds. Eliot has no idea at all what to think of that. 

“Oh, I noticed, gave them your _name_ and everything,” Hardison grumbles. “Wouldn’t give Lisa your name, but a bunch of criminals you just met, sure.”

“ _W_ _e’re_ a criminal,” Leia reminds him, and yeah, Eliot remembers her name, of course he does. “And Lisa cheated on you.”

“Well, those folks _cheated_ me,” Hardison retorts. “Don’t matter how much we liked them if we can’t trust them, baby.” Eliot catches himself nodding in agreement, which only irritates him further. 

(He’s also pretty sure raccoons have excellent hearing and night-vision, so there’s a solid chance this whole thing is designed to put him off course.

After all, odds are high that the hacker did it.)

Before he can think any further, Leia hisses and both heads turn to face Eliot.

“How you doin’?” he asks, casually strolling closer. There’s a distinctive gun-shaped lump in the hacker’s jacket, and Eliot wants to be in arm’s reach of him before he pulls it.

“Been better,” Hardison says, reaching for the weapon. He brandishes it like he’s watched too many movies. “You mind telling me what happened to the designs?”

“What makes you think I know what happened? Stupid,” Eliot scoffs.

“Look, fuck you, man, you did it when we were coming down the elevator.” He’s grasping at straws, really, and it’s clear from the droop of his daemon’s tail that he knows it. Whether or not he’s guilty, Hardison’s too bright not to know that he’s the most likely culprit. 

(What’s more surprising is the sinking in his own stomach. For some reason he is not interested in investigating more thoroughly, as much as Eliot does not want to have been double-crossed, Eliot does not want this kid to be the double-crosser. But his entire reputation is as someone who gets the job done, and Eliot cannot let a weak-ass accusation like that stand.)

“Yeah, that makes sense,” he says, letting the scorn fill his tone. “You had the file every second.” There’s a gun in his face, but Eliot is more interested in Boudicca’s movements— a twitch of her ears back the way they came, and a sniff towards the other corner. 

“Hold up, Cujo,” Hardison sneers, following Eliot’s gaze to his daemon, “I did my part, I transferred the files.” 

That one stings, though it’s nothing he hasn’t heard before, from the football field to boot camp to...well, worse places. Hardison has _no idea_ what Boudicca looks like at her most dangerous, but she’s never _rabid._

“You better get that gun out of my face,” Eliot says evenly, ignoring the hacker’s interruption, “or else I’m gonna feed it to you.” Horror movies aside, Eliot’s learned that calm threats tend to scare people more than dripping snarls. 

Boudicca growls, low, and Eliot turns just before Nate Ford’s bloodhound comes into view, the man striding along behind her. “Hey!” Ford calls. It’s an order, not a greeting. 

“Did you do it?” Eliot demands. “You’re the only one that’s ever played both sides.”

The bloodhound barks, but Ford ignores the question. “Yeah, you seem pretty relaxed for a guy with a gun on him.”

Eliot shrugs. Hardison’s obviously no killer—Eliot knows what people who are prepared to kill look like, he’s seen that face enough, both in the mirror and elsewhere. And if the hacker makes any move towards actually firing the gun, Eliot can have him on the ground and the gun on the other side of the room before he could make another dumb movie reference. But that’s more information than anyone needs. Instead, he says, “The safety’s on.”

“Like I’m gonna fall for that.”

Ford backs his play smoothly. “No, actually, the safety _is_ on,” he says, and disarms Hardison the moment he looks down. It’s a decent enough move. “You armed?” he asks Eliot, who shakes his head. 

Eliot is a weapon, he doesn’t need to carry any. “I don’t like guns,” he explains. It’s not a real explanation, but it’s all Ford is going to get.

Boudicca and Ford’s daemon raise their heads at the same moment and turn together towards the corner. Eliot follows their gaze. A moment later, Parker materializes out of the shadows. She walks up to them, her gait more like a predator’s than anyone with a dragonfly for a soul ought to have. She’s also holding a gun, and if that doesn’t exactly scare Eliot, it certainly makes him more nervous than the hacker’s weapon did. Parker is unpredictable, and that’s always dangerous. 

“Our money’s not in our account,” she bites out. “That makes us cry inside, in our special angry place.”

Okay, maybe it does scare him. Eliot is basically made out of special angry places stitched together with spite and the occasional really good meal, but he has no desire to know what goes on in Parker’s angry place. And the speaking in plural thing is _creepy._ It reminds him of royalty, and Eliot’s never met a royal he didn’t want to punch in the face after three minutes.

Ford seems to agree, reaching out like he’s trying not to spook a wild animal, for all Parker’s dragonfly is circling her head like a moon in orbit. “Okay, Parker,” he says, taking away her gun. She gives him a dirty look but releases the weapon.

“Now, would you come here to get paid?” Ford asks, glancing around.

“Hell, no,” Hardison says. “Transfer of funds, man. Global economy.” It’s just buzzwords, but he’s right, and Parker’s nodding too. Eliot’s got some cash stashed, but for a payout this big, he wants it in his secure accounts. He’s here to find out what happened to his money, that’s all.

“It’s supposed to be a walkaway,” he says. “I’m never supposed to see you again.” The longer he spends in a room with these people, the easier it will be for them to find him again. Especially Ford. Eliot of all people will not underestimate the strength of a bloodhound’s nose. 

“Then the only reason you guys are here… is because you didn’t get paid, and you’re pissed off,” Ford says, and he starts laughing, the asshole. The bloodhound barks an alarm, and Eliot stops being pissed at Ford (okay, stops _focusing_ on being pissed at Ford) and starts listening to what he’s saying. “The only way to get us all in the same place at the same time again is to tell us that we’re not… getting...paid…” 

Same place, same time. Oh, _fuck._ Boudicca growls. Ford’s bloodhound leads the way, the others spread out in a line behind. Eliot’s bounding up the stairs when the hacker trips, falling flat on his face. His daemon flies off his shoulder to land on the cement, looking dazed.

“Get up, get up, let’s go, hustle,” Ford growls as Eliot grabs the hacker’s soft sweatshirt and yanks him to his feet. Hardison tries to dive for his daemon, but Eliot’s got a firm grip on his shirt and besides, Boudicca is already there, catching the raccoon up in her jaws and racing out the door. Hardison whimpers, but keeps running. 

They’ve just made it outside when the warehouse blows. It’s not the worst explosion Eliot’s been in. 

The last thing he sees before consciousness fades is Parker’s daemon, spiraling uncontrollably in the blast. 

Eliot wakes up surrounded by EMTs and cops. He considers making a break for it, but his head is still swimming and he may as well escape from the hospital later. Besides… Boudicca is just over there, fussing over the hacker. The EMTs have strapped him to a stretcher. Boudicca has scooped up Leia in her jaws and is carefully laying the raccoon on top of Hardison’s chest. All the others are still unconscious. Together, Boudicca and one of the EMT’s daemons, an orangutan, lever Ford’s dog into the ambulance next to her human. It's as clear an indication as she ever gives him that she wants to guard these people, and it’s not like he has any better ideas. He can follow his daemon’s lead on this one. 

He climbs into the ambulance next to her. Right now, his only plan is to stay with this crew. He can’t leave them unconscious and in custody. One or the other, maybe, but not both. So he follows the medics. He lets the cops fingerprint him. He’s got a bit of wire in his shoe he’ll be able to reach if he needs, and he can always dislocate his thumb, so he lets the cops cuff him to the chair, too. He watches the team.

Boudicca follows him, half a pace behind. 

“You were right about the smell,” he tells her. It’s not quite an apology, though it should be. There are so many apologies he owes her that he has no idea where to start. Once, she would have tossed her head and said “I’m always right,” before tackling him to the ground for a loving tussle, but now a tiny twitch of her ear is the only indication that she has heard him. 

Parker probably wakes first, but he doesn’t realize it till he hears Hardison groan and she shushes him. He’s just started to fill them in when Ford wakes up with a full-body flinch. His daemon whimpers.

“You don’t like hospitals,” Eliot observes. 

“Not much,” Ford admits, which is an understatement if he’s ever heard one. 

Eliot spots the dragonfly peering through the vent. He can hear Parker pacing. He’s pretty sure if the window had been in her room instead of his, she’d be gone by now. 

“Where are we?” Ford asks. The bloodhound’s nose twitches furiously. 

“County hospital,” Hardison says. “Local cops, responding to the explosion.”

“Have we been processed?”

Eliot raises his ink-stained hand at the same time the bloodhound says, “yep,” nosing at her human’s identically stained hand. 

“Yo, if the staties run us, man, we’re screwed,” Hardison says, stating the obvious. There’s a scrabbling noise Eliot thinks is the raccoon, though he’s not sure what she’s doing. 

“How long?” Parker asks.

“Thirty, thirty-five minutes, depending on the software.”

“They printed us twenty minutes ago,” Eliot informs them. “So unless we get out of here in the next ten minutes, we all go to jail.” Eliot has no intention of going to jail. His prints will set off some serious red flags, sure, but he’s got options before any of the interested parties, which include multiple competing factions of the United States government, could track him down. He could beat these cops easy, even handcuffed. He’s got a fake ID with real military credentials sewed into his jacket. He knows how to talk to cops so they think he’s one of them. Hell, _he_ could get out the window and let Boudicca make her own way out, if it came to that. 

But none of those options get anyone else out, and if Eliot actually wanted to leave them in this pickle, he would’ve been gone before any of the others woke up. 

Ford is visibly thinking, muttering to himself. 

“I can take these cops,” Eliot suggests. It’s not a bluff. He prefers not to fight cops, but he will if he has to, and he doesn’t make offers he’s not willing to follow through on. But it’s not totally sincere, either. More of a weather balloon, released to the air to see what the others will make of it. 

“Don’t you dare, you kill anyone, you screw up our getaway,” Parker’s dragonfly says from the vent, his voice echoing tinnily. Eliot doesn’t know whether to be appalled that Parker’s main objection to murder is as an obstacle to her plans or discomfited at being addressed by another person’s daemon. He settles for being mildly offended that she thinks he’d be sloppy enough to actually kill someone.

(It’s almost ironic, that someone as soaked in blood as he is can still be appalled to find someone else so cavalier about murder). 

“Hold up, I’m still handcuffed here, I can’t even go to the bathroom. I gotta go,” Hardison whines. God, this is why he works alone. What kind of criminal can’t even get himself out of handcuffs on his own, honestly.

“Parker, get me a phone,” Ford orders. “What we’re going to do is, we’re going to get out of here together.”

“This was a one time deal,” Eliot reminds him. He doesn’t want anyone getting any _ideas_ about what his continued presence here means.

“Look, guys,” Ford says, “here’s your problem. You know what you can do. I know what all of you can do, so that gives me the edge, it gives me the plan.”

“We don’t trust these guys,” Parker says. Eliot feels a flash of inexplicable hurt. He knows he’s not a trustworthy person, hearing that from a crazy person he met _yesterday_ should not have the power to hurt him. Boudicca flicks an ear at him, like she knows what he’s thinking and thinks he’s hilarious. 

Ford asks, “Do you trust _me_?"

There’s a long pause. Eliot looks at the ex-insurance agent. Ford is now running his hands along his daemon’s back, checking for scratches or injuries, in a way Eliot cannot help but envy.

Before this job, it had been two years since he’d crossed paths with Nate Ford, the only time before now that they’d ever worked together. It had been a kidnapping in Southern California. Eliot was called in on retrieval. Ford was called in to secure the rubies demanded as ransom, rubies insured heavily with IYS. At the end of the day, both gemstones and child were secure, in no small part due to Ford’s machinations and his consistent prioritization of the girl’s life. 

Eliot thinks to the time before that, to the client complaining about the irritating insurance agent who refused to take his very generous bribe. 

He glances at Boudicca, who is licking her front paw, a sure sign that she is completely focused on the situation. She gives him no indication what she thinks about it, though. 

“Of course,” he says, knowing as he speaks that he’s somehow speaking for all of them. “You’re an honest man.” 

The bloodhound’s tail wags and Ford breathes out, like he’s trying to pretend he’s not relieved to hear that, like he doesn’t want to admit that _Eliot Spencer’s_ good opinion might matter to him beyond its usefulness in this moment, and isn’t that interesting. “Parker, phone,” he orders again. 

It’s amazingly smooth from there. Phones, calls, pictures, hacking. A _fax_ , of all things. They’re walking out of the hospital without so much as a stubbed toe in eight minutes flat. 

By the time they’re walking into Hardison’s obscenely over-sized apartment, Eliot has moved on from the adrenaline of the explosion and the escape to seething at the double-crossing bastard who placed the bombs. 

“I’m gonna beat Dubinich so bad, even people that look like him are gonna bleed,” Eliot growls. Boudicca growls in agreement. There are, apparently, a few things Eliot and his daemon still agree on, and attempted murder from their own client is top of the list. 

“You won’t get within a hundred yards,” Parker drawls, the dragonfly hovering just over her head like a lightbulb in a cartoon. “He knows your face. He knows all our faces.”

“He tried to kill us,” Eliot says. This is a point worth repeating.

“More importantly, he didn’t pay us.” 

Both Eliot and Boudicca turn to stare at the thief. “How is that more important?” he asks blankly.

“We take that personally,” the dragonfly answers.

There are...rather a lot of people who have tried to kill Eliot, some of which he takes more personally than others. Like, for instance, ones who hired him first. But money, that’s never personal. That’s always about who the other guy is, not who _Eliot_ is. “There’s something wrong with you,” he says.

But Hardison’s got other things to point out. Apparently, the designs had belonged to Pierson all along. They didn’t steal them back, they just stole them.

“Why would Dubinich lie to us?” Hardison asks.

“Because you’re thieves,” Ford says, and Eliot cannot stand the self-righteous tone in his voice, even if he’s right. “If he hired you for a straight-up crime, you’d know he was a bad guy just like you, you’d be suspicious. This way, you just saw another citizen in over his head, and that’s why you didn’t see the double-cross coming.” 

“Why didn’t you see it coming?” Parker asks, and that is a damn good question. Eliot gives her a nod for asking it. 

“Because _I_ am not a thief,” Ford says, as though being a thief is something you _are_ rather than something you _do_ , and Eliot would really like to punch that smug mouth in.

“You know what, maybe that’s the problem,” he says, stalking towards Ford. 

“Hey, hey—” Hardison says, trying to interrupt, but Eliot isn’t having it.

“You’re the only one that met him in person,” Eliot says. “What kind of daemon did he have?”

Ford shrugs. “Some kind of tiny octopus or squid or something, he pulled it in a tank in a little wagon thing behind him. What does that have to do with anything?”

“Pull up that picture again,” Eliot orders. Hardison clicks a few buttons and there’s Dubinich on the screen, his daemon a blob behind him. Without being asked, the hacker zooms in on the daemon.

“That’s a blue-ringed octopus,” Eliot says. “It’s a very distinctive pattern. Highly intelligent, highly, _highly_ venomous. Could kill a man in minutes. That is a very dangerous man right there. You should’ve caught that.” 

Hardison spins around in his chair and grabs up the papers he’d been trying to shove in their faces a minute ago while Ford blinks at the image. “Yep, let’s all get away from the very dangerous man who knows our faces, aight? I bought four tickets to London, Rome, Paris and Sao Paulo, matching the IDs you gave me.”

Eliot may be willing to concede that having a hacker on his side is convenient. It's been a while since he's been to Brazil. 

“You’re running,” Ford says idiotically. 

“Yes, sir,” Eliot says, instead of punching him. “You got a better idea?” 

“No, no, _you’re running_ ,” Ford repeats, and Eliot sees that he’s still staring at the image of Dubinich. Next to him, the bloodhound has lowered her head. Her nose twitches rapidly. “Now that was a high risk play. You’ve got your balls tied to the stock price like a cinder block, shareholder meeting coming up. We can’t let this guy have any time to cool down.”

Eliot wishes the most surprising thing about that statement was Ford’s vividly disturbing imagery, but apparently Nate “I’m not a thief” Ford is having some other ideas. “You want to run a game on this guy. _You_?” 

Ford grins. It’s the most alive Eliot has seen him look since San Diego. The most animation he’s seen from the droopy daemon, too. “How do you think I got most of my stolen merchandise back? I mean, this guy is greedy, he thinks he’s smart, he’s the best kind of mark.”

“He does think he got rid of us,” Parker points out.

Hardison smirks, “Element of surprise,” he says, stroking Leia’s striped tail which is hanging over his shoulder. It should not be that adorable, even as the raccoon’s bright eyes peer around the other shoulder at all of them.

“What’s in it for me?” Eliot asks. Boudicca bares her teeth in a gesture that Eliot knows Ford will read as a threat but that he recognizes as his soul judging him and finding him wanting. Nothing new, then. 

“Payback,” Ford answers, “and if it goes right, a lot of money.”

“And what’s in it for us?” Parker demands.

Ford turns to look at her. “A lot of money,” he says. “And if it goes right, payback.”

She smiles, slow, and the dragonfly lands on her shoulder. It’s almost angelic, the way the dragonfly’s golden wings catch the sunlight, next to that glowing smile. 

“Hardison?” Ford asks.

“I was just going to send a thousand porno magazines to his office,” the hacker says, and the raccoon chitters in amusement. “But hell yeah, man, let’s kick him up.”

There’s one more question to ask, though, and Eliot asks it. “What’s in it for you?” 

The eagerness drains out of the other man’s face, but Eliot can’t regret asking. He can’t go in on a job without knowing what the mastermind wants, not when “all of you degenerate thieves behind bars” is a perfectly plausible outcome.

But the bloodhound makes a noise somewhere between a whimper and a snarl. Ford says, “He used my son.” 

And—okay, now Eliot _really_ wants to destroy this son of a bitch. Eliot’s done a lot of terrible things, things he is not thinking about right now, and he’s well aware that he’s got no grounding on which to judge, but he is really looking forward to beating this guy. 

“All right,” Ford says briskly. “Let’s go get Sophie.” He strolls out of the room, followed by his daemon, Parker, and Hardison, as though that were a reasonable thing to say.

He looks at Boudicca. “What the hell’s a Sophie?” he asks, but she just laughs at him and follows the others out the door. 

(He gets the sense that he’s gonna need to get used to following these folks around, but that’s ridiculous. Just this one job, this bit of payback. Then they’re done. He’ll walk away.

He will.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Daemons introduced in this chapter:
> 
> Victor Dubenich- Unnamed, Greater Blue-Ringed Octopus. Blue-ringed octopuses are one of the world's most venomous marine animals. They are pretty small, no more than ten centimetres in size, and are recognizably by their distinct yellow color patterned with blue and black rings that flash when threatened. Like other octopuses, they are excellent at squeezing into and out of tight spaces.
> 
> Other notes:  
> Eliot is not as good at understanding what Boudicca is thinking as he thinks he is, largely because he spends so much time lying to himself.


	3. Sophie

Sophie is in the middle of giving Lady Macbeth’s delightfully vicious monologue to a mostly empty theatre when Melpomene launches herself off her shoulder, fluttering above the stage. She stutters, giving the mockingbird a dirty look.

“Stop up the access and passage to remorse,” she proclaims, when Mel whispers _Nate Ford_ in their mental link and Sophie loses the line entirely.

Nate Ford, in her theatre! When she’s not doing anything illegal, even. He can’t be here for anything she stole, which means he’s here for _her_ , and that is…intriguing.

After the show, she takes her time changing out of her costume and doesn’t let herself think about why. 

She can’t stop her daemon from speculating, though. “He must be here for us, right?” Mel says from her perch on the vanity. 

“A coincidence seems rather improbable,” Sophie agrees, wiping off the stage makeup. “Unless he’s particularly fond of the Scottish play.”

Mel shakes her head, clacking her beak thoughtfully. “He can’t be after any of our art, he quit his job months ago.” 

“Mmm,” Sophie hums, reapplying lipstick. It had been such fun, flitting around Europe with that adorable bloodhound on her tail. Nothing had ever happened beyond flirtation, not with Nate loyal to the ideals that placed them on opposite sides of the board and to that sweet butterfly of a wife.

(It never bothered _Sophie_ that he was married. Sophie has been married a few times, once even for real, and she knows that people change too much to make lifelong vows.)

But a child. Nate’s child. She and Mel had argued over reaching out when they heard about the death, and later about the divorce, but in the end they had decided to stay away. What could they offer a grieving father?

When she steps outside with Mel perched in her favorite spot on Sophie’s right shoulder, Nate and Brigid are waiting for them. The walls of the narrow alley echo with Nate’s applause and Brigid’s welcoming bark. 

“I thought you were great,” he says.

She smiles. “My only fan.”

They look at each other for a long moment. He looks gaunt. There’s more grey in his hair, and in Brigid’s fur. She doesn’t need Brigid’s nose to guess he’s been drinking- his eyes are bloodshot, but still that sharp crystal blue she remembers. 

“I’m a citizen now. Honest,” she says. What she means is _you can’t chase me anymore, I’m not running._ What she means is, _please tell me you have something interesting, civilian life is so boring._ What she means is, _why are you here._

Nate smiles. He _smirks_ , even, and there’s a joyful wag of Brigid’s tail. “I’m not,” he replies.

Mel whistles softly in Sophie’s ear. “You’re playing my side,” Sophie says, not quite a question, not quite a confirmation. She looks for the first time to the people standing at the end of the alley. The short man with the long hair and the canine daemon has got to be a hitter, with a stance like that, not to mention the muscles. There’s a Black man with a raccoon draped around his shoulders, and a blond woman with a dragonfly in her hair. These aren’t Nate’s friends. They’re a _crew._ She looks back at the main himself, at the glint in his eye and the smirk hovering around his lips. “I always knew you had it in you,” she says, and means _I always knew you wanted to be at my side,_ on _my side, instead of on my trail._

“Um, are you in?” He’s flustered, and she’s willing to bet he heard her subtext. 

Mel spreads her wings and dives to brush Brigid’s muzzle, the bloodhound raising her head to meet the soft feathers. “I wouldn’t miss this,” Sophie declares, and means exactly that.

“Well,” Nate says, reaching an arm out so his daemon can nuzzle at his palm, “let’s go break the law one more time.”

It only takes Sophie about three steps into the wide open space of the apartment to feel like she has a handle on Hardison. Grew up poor, got rich fast, never had to learn restraint. Mostly bare walls, with a couple over-sized comic book prints. The huge screens and computer set-up confirms her guess—Hardison is a hacker. 

She had profiled Eliot immediately, standard muscle, but finds herself reevaluating her guesses almost immediately.

“When’s the last time you met a Victor?” Nate asks. Sophie thinks he just wants to have something to say to keep Hardison from hogging the whole spotlight, it would be just like the man, but Eliot answers. 

“Vietnam. Town called Banho Zay.”

“Chinese border,” Sophie says. She has fond memories of the town and the banh xeo she’d eaten there... and of the intricately carved jade brush pot she’d been smuggling in a hidden compartment of her water bottle. 

Eliot stills like a predator who has spotted an incongruous rustling in the bushes. He leans back on the couch, giving her a long assessing look. “That’s an odd thing for you to know,” he observes. Mel, sitting on her shoulder, tilts her head to give him an equally assessing once-over. 

“That’s an odd place for you to be,” Sophie retorts smoothly. They both know that an American in Banho Zay could only be there for smuggling things into (or out of) China. It’s not precisely a regular tourist spot. 

After a moment, Eliot gives her a nod. She can almost hear him thinking _point to you_. He glances over at his daemon, who is glaring at the mark's image on the screen. The wolf (Sophie thinks she’s a wolf, isn’t quite sure) doesn’t even twitch at her human’s gaze. 

Hardison continues, “Now Bering is in charge of a lot of big fat government contracts. Some Department of Defense research, very classified stuff.”

“Can we use that?” a new voice says. Sophie glances to her left and startles as she realizes the voice was Parker’s daemon. Parker’s own mouth is full of popcorn. 

Eliot shifts slightly in discomfort, but no one seems particularly surprised. It seems Parker’s daemon, a beautiful golden dragonfly, talks to the group sometimes. It’s an anomaly. Everything else about Parker screams closed off, she’s got walls up Sophie could see from _space,_ and yet here’s her daemon blithely contributing to the briefing. Sophie can't remember the last time Melpomene spoke to another person when it wasn't for a con. 

Hardison answered the question with hardly a missed beat— apparently the mark works exclusively on the domestic side of things—and Sophie sets aside the question of Parker’s inconsistencies to think about later. 

Nate gives the hacker a piercing look. “I know when you sent Dubenich his designs you weren’t supposed to make any copies.”

“No, I promise. That would be very wrong.” The raccoon smirks. Sophie is baffled that a professional criminal is this bad of a liar. 

Nate orders, “Show me your copies,” and for a moment the room lights up with the force of the hacker’s grin.

Nate starts pacing, analyzing the plans, Brigid at his heels. Sophie is more entertained by the rising astonishment from the other three thieves. One of the main things she and Nate had always had in common was the way they picked information up, just enough expertise to sound fluent in a huge range of fields, just enough to establish themselves as an insider, just enough to find something to _use._

Sophie can see Nate starting to formulate a plan and grins at Mel. This is going to be _so much fun._

Sophie is waiting for the mark when he arrives at work the next morning. She can hear him bustling down the hall, and knows that the noise is Dubinich by the way the secretary’s daemon, a sweet rabbit sitting on the desk, twitches its nose and shuffles slightly away from its human’s hand. 

And there he is, hurrying into the room without even a glance at his employee. He’s holding a briefcase in one hand and the handle to a little movable fish tank in the other. At first glance, Sophie can’t even spot the daemon in the tank, just some rocks and coral. 

“Your nine o’clock is here,” the flustered secretary says, and by the time the executive has turned his head, it’s Ana Gunschtot sitting in the chair, ready to introduce herself. 

The key is to keep him accepting what she’s offering. The first ask is easy- a business card. 

“You government?” he asks. 

“No, no. Private business consortium.” She follows him into the office, but walks to the window instead of the chair, keeping him orbiting her. “We are looking to encourage infrastructure development and economic renewal.”

“I have no idea what that means in English. What does it mean?” 

Now she’s spotted his daemon, who has turned a darker blue as it swims to the edge of the tank. Actual camouflage, how fascinating. 

“We create jobs and trade in Africa,” she answers. “Keep the graft and the stealing manageable.”

(Over her earbud, Nate says, “This is her stage. Sophie Devereaux is the finest actress you’ve ever seen… when she’s breaking the law.” Even the knowledge that Nate must be responding to doubts from the rest of the crew can’t keep her from glowing. The smile Ana turns on Victor is genuine, and devastating.)

Dubinich says, “Keep graft and stealing manageable in Africa, good luck but I don’t think I can help, I don’t think any human being on Earth can help you with that. Sorry.”

She notes but doesn’t comment on the casual racism. Racists see what they expect to, and that’s a very helpful trait in someone you plan to con. She smiles, instead. “Come on. Let’s go and talk somewhere a little less formal, eh?”

Get him out of the office, out of his comfort zone- and once again, establishing the habit of following her. She doesn’t give him a chance to say no, and she knows he won’t let her go without at least saying goodbye, forcing him to follow her down the hall, stuttering all the way. From there, it’s easy enough to keep him following till they’re outside.

Mel ruffles her wings in pleasure as they step into the sunshine, but Dubenich’s grip tightens on his daemon’s tank. As they reach the stairs, he collapses the handle in a practiced motion and lifts the tank into his arms. Up close, Sophie can see that the octopus is tiny, not even the size of her hand. She would not have guessed that this was an animal capable of killing a person with its venom.

She keeps up the chatter with the executive, alternately appreciative and irritated by Nate’s contributions in her ear. Dubench is dubious, but she’s got his full attention. Even the octopus, now a pale yellow, seems to have its gaze on her.

“I’m sorry, was it Gunshot?” he asks.

“Gunschtot,” she corrects, and then, while he stutters an apology, fixes him with her most intense gaze and says, “Ana.”

He’s touched, even though she’s been calling him by name without permission for the last five minutes. “Ana,” he repeats. “Thank you.” He smiles at her. “How’s this? If we announce a new product then you can order as many as your little heart desires.”

Mel fluffs her wings, an expression Sophie expects Dubinich will read as excitement, though she knows it to be irritation. _Little heart_ , indeed. Nate’s _attagirl_ , a moment later, is nearly as annoying.

“Ana, I’m really sorry, but I can’t help you,” Dubinich says. 

“I understand,” she says, not moving. She will not chase him.

He checks his watch. “I’ve got…”

She doesn’t need a watch to know the right second to speak. She waits for him to start to turn away, force him to come back to her. “I’ll take it to Pierson,” she says. 

The octopus _glows_ , its blue rings flashing at the name. 

“Pierson,” he stutters. “Pierson? Uh, sure, go ahead, Pierson’s a great company, I don’t think they can help you, but…” The octopus flares its tentacles on the word _help._

“Oh, they have a reputation for long-term investment, you don’t. They’re _innovators_." She angles her head so the wind will catch her hair dramatically. "Yeah, it’s probably a better fit.”

“I know-I’m aware that you’re manipulating me, Ana,” he says, but being aware of manipulation happening doesn’t matter much when it’s still so effective. If he thinks calling her on it is enough to make her back down, he’s underestimated her severely.

Instead, she acknowledges it. With millions at stake, he should be _insulted_ if she didn’t try to manipulate him.

It’s too big a fish to turn down, even knowing it's bait of some kind. He lifts his hands in surrender. “Okay, I give up, I’ll take the meeting.” He reaches a hand out to shake, but she’s already walking away. _Always leave them wanting more._ Mel launches off her shoulder to fly next to her, whistling.

“I’ll have my office call you,” she says.

“What? Yeah.”

“Day after tomorrow?” She doesn’t bother looking back. She can envision him perfectly, standing by the railing. 

Right on cue, he says, “Uh, yeah sure... Look forward to doing business with you,” and she disappears from his view.

She meets up with Eliot around the corner. He glances at her. She’s expecting a comment about the grift, but his gaze shifts to Mel, and he says, “Mockingbird, huh?” 

Mel comes to rest on her shoulder and whistles an affirmative. Sophie looks towards the other daemon, who walks half a pace in front of them, just out of Eliot's reach. “Wolf?” she asks.

Eliot shakes his head. “Wolfdog,” he corrects, his own gaze also on his daemon. The wolfdog shows no signs of listening to the conversation, her gaze darting around the perimeter, evaluating threats. 

Wolfdog. Hybrid daemons are highly unusual. Conventional wisdom says it means a person whose soul is split, a certain dichotomy of spirit, an essential disagreement within a person’s being. Sophie nods in acknowledgment and adds the conversation to her growing list of reasons not to underestimate Eliot Spencer. 

She gets another to add to the list when they’re back at base. It’s a casual game of billiards, but Eliot brings up a topic that is anything but casual.

“You look better than when we started,” he says to Nate. Sophie, sitting in the kitchen, listens closely. 

“Yeah,” Nate agrees, with a glance towards Brigid, whose tail keeps wagging. 

“Yeah. And that bothers you, huh?” It’s a question Sophie wishes she had the courage to ask.

Nate stutters. “I, uh, well this isn’t supposed to feel—”

“Good?” Eliot finishes. “It’s not that hard to figure out. Dubenich screwed you. He cheated by stealing from that other company and your good guy brain sees him as the bad guy. Your conscience is clear.”

 _Your_ conscience, Sophie can’t help but note. Eliot says nothing about his own conscience, and his daemon, curled on the floor casually licking her paw, is no help.

“You want to take your shot?” Nate says, an unsubtle change of topic. 

But instead of taking the cue, no pun intended, Eliot doubles down. “Listen, I’m sorry about your kid.” 

Over by the computers, Hardison stops typing. On the couch, Parker goes still. Sophie knows they are all listening when Nate says, “You don’t know anything about that.”

Eliot says, “Everybody knows. A guy like you goes off the street, a lot of people notice. And it was a bad story, too. How did they justify that, huh? The insurance company just not paying for his treatment?” There’s anger in his voice, and compassion. It’s surprising, in a hitter, but Sophie’s focus is on Nate, who has reached out for Brigid without even seeming to realize it.

“They claimed it was experimental,” Nate answers, his voice distant. 

But then Eliot goes too far. “You should’ve kept one of those Monets you found,” he suggests, a thought Sophie is sure has occurred to Nate, who recovered millions in assets for IYS over the years, more than enough to pay for treatment if he’d been less honest. “You fence that—”

Brigid growls. “Eliot, you and I are not friends,” Nate says. 

Mel pecks at her ear and Sophie takes the hint. It’s time to give Nate something else to think about.

“Right, right,” Eliot answers. “Because you have so many of them.” He salutes her with his beer. “You got incoming,” he tells Nate, and shows some discretion by vanishing. 

“Hey, can you help me with this earpiece?” she asks.

“Why don’t you ask Hardison?” 

“Nate, c’mon,” she insists. He takes the earpiece. 

His fingers are gentle in her hair, and she can feel his breath against her cheek. He deftly avoids touching Mel, but it's by a matter of inches. She can feel Brigid's gaze on the spot where his fingers touched her skin. 

She looks at those blue, blue eyes, so full of emotion. “This time, you really are inside my head,” she says, and walks away. _Always leave them wanting more._

Once they are alone, Melpomene says, “If we can do this with Bering Aerospace, we can do it with IYS.” It takes her a moment to understand what her daemon means. This is what they can offer a grieving father, Sophie realizes. It'll take some time to figure out the right con, the right in, but with this crew, these strange and competent people, she can finally offer him the revenge he deserves.


	4. Nate

The problem, of course, is that they’re right, every one of them. _You look better than when we started_ , Eliot had said, and Nate hasn’t missed that Brigid’s tail has been wagging more, has been failing to ignore that this is the first morning he’s woken up without a hangover headache in… well, a while, anyway. 

Sophie, in his ear, is busy charming some Nigerian government officials. _This time you really are in my head_ , she had said, but he hadn’t quite been prepared for what it would be like to have her in his, listening to her magic and wondering for the thousandth time who she is under all those masks. 

A rapid beeping interrupts his thoughts. “He’s here,” Hardison says, typing rapidly on a tablet. His daemon silences the beeping with a swift poke at a different device. “Or at least his phone is, which is pretty much the same thing, am I right? He’s ten minutes early, how rude.” 

Nate scans the approaching cars, but it’s Brigid who spots Dubinich first, her nose twitching. She’s growling, so low it’s not audible over the rush of traffic, but Nate can feel the vibration of her anger by his side. He can feel her eagerness, too, how much she wants to just _tackle_ the bastard but is waiting because she knows their plan will hurt him more.

_How badly do you want to screw the insurance company that let your son die?_

Dubinich had been right, too, and Nate wants him to _suffer._ He watches the businessman enter the office building, clutching his daemon's tank, and reminds himself that punching his stupid face would be too good for this man. 

“Sophie, he’s on-site,” he warns. 

“What? No, I’m not ready,” she says, that voice he’d be able to recognize anywhere. Brigid whines at the sound of it, nosing at his knee. He locks eyes with his daemon and _Showtime_ he says and _Focus_ she says and as one, they turn to watch Dubinich walk into the building across the street.

“If you don’t meet him right now in the lobby, he’s going to go to the building directory and look for the office number. Guys, we are not _in_ the building directory.”

“And why aren’t we in the building directory?” Eliot grumbles. 

“I don’t know, maybe because they’re fake offices?” Hardison retorts. His voice echoes weirdly, first from his spot two feet from Nate’s left, then half a second later in his ear. 

There’s a pause. All Nate hears is breathing. Then, “There’s no elevator!” Sophie says.

In order to get Sophie to the lobby before Dubinich fails to find them in the directory, they need to a) move Sophie fast and b) make Dubinich slow. 

“All right, I’ll distract him. Parker, you got ten seconds to get Sophie to the lobby.” Distractions. He heads towards the building as he thinks. Most obvious is a fake phone call, but Dubinich knows all their voices, and that’s too targeted, anyway. It can’t be so obviously aimed at him. 

“Don’t overthink it,” Brigid says. “Big loud noise gets anyone’s attention.” She nods towards the cars.

Sophie, in his ear, is obviously terrified of Parker’s plan. Nate, to his own surprise, is not. Parker knows ropes. She won’t drop his— Sophie. 

Nate pulls out a baton and smashes a car window. It makes a satisfying crash and the car begins to beep. Already, people are hurrying over to see what’s going on. He smashes another. 

_Come on, Nathan, tell the truth,_ Parker whispers in his memory. _You’re having fun._

How many times has he walked down the street consumed by anger, wanting to just smash everything? Now he’s doing it, and he doesn’t feel guilty, he feels satisfaction. _This shouldn’t feel so good_ , he thinks again. 

“Oh, ah, our offices are on the tenth floor,” Sophie says. Nate pockets the baton, walks off briskly, ditches the jacket and comes back around the corner to sit at the cafe with Hardison, indistinguishable from any of the middle-aged white businessmen walking along the street. 

“One thing,” Sophie says. “The gentleman bringing you this opportunity to work with their government, they’ll, um, expect some, um, compensation. Not a _bribe,_ of course.” There’s a soft trill Nate recognizes as Mel. He imagines the mockingbird sitting on Sophie’s shoulder, her head right next to the earbud. 

“A finder’s fee,” Dubinich says.

“Exactly.” 

“I thought your job was to eliminate graft and stealing.”

Sophie chuckles. Nate shivers. She says, “No. My job is to keep it manageable.”

Brigid’s nose twitches a second before Parker slides into the empty seat at the cafe. 

“Nice job on the zip line,” he tells her, the bulk of his attention on the conversation Sophie is facilitating between the Nigerian officials and the mark. 

“Totally thought she was gonna break a leg,” Parker giggles. The dragonfly lands on the table. “Not bad for a first time,” she concedes. 

Brigid snorts. Nate says, “She’s closing it up.” There’s something deeply satisfying and engrossing about being on this side of the equation. In the past, he’s only seen the aftereffects of Hurricane Sophie. He’s interviewed the stammering men still trying to figure out what went wrong, seen the camera footage of her in various outfits, even caught her wink (and, memorably, her bullet) from the other side of the room, but he’s never heard her like this, from the beginning of a con, watching her coax men along her bidding like a flower draws bees. 

He’s never seen the others like this either, Parker’s feet on the table, Hardison casually running a hand along his raccoon’s back. He’s watched Eliot work before, that time with the kidnapping in San Diego, but his attention had been on the job, not on Spencer’s work ethic, but now Nate finds he doesn't need to worry about watching his back, not with Eliot and his wolfdog standing guard. 

Of all the things that have surprised Nate these last few days, discovering that he trusts these criminals may well be the most shocking. Oh, he wouldn’t trust them with his wallet, or his car keys, or (God forbid) his _feelings_ , but he does trust them to do their jobs, and do them well. 

“We got him?” he asks, as Dubinich’s car turns the corner. 

“We own him,” Sophie says smugly, and her daemon whistles, somehow even more smug.

“Okay gang, let’s go. We got a busy day tomorrow.” Brigid falls in beside Boudicca as the crew walks together.

“This is going to work, right?” 

Brigid barks. “I guarantee it,” Nate promises. 

She is, somehow, even more beautiful than he remembers. 

That night, he falls asleep after only one drink, and his dreams are full of birdsong.

Nate watches the endgame from the building across the street. He watches the swirling crowds of smug and wealthy people congratulating each other on their success. He sees Sophie approach Dubinich, hears him take the bait, spots the Nigerean delegation disappearing from the pavilion. 

Hardison hands him a tablet with video feed of the conference room, so he has a visual when Dubinich, dripping self-congratulation, announces, “The exact terms of this agreement are these,” and calls in the FBI. 

Brigid’s nose twitches and her tail wags. 

When the FBI agents corner Dubinich instead, Brigid _grins_. 

With a few clicks, Hardison zooms in on Dubinich, his face paling and his daemon flashing blue. Nate remembers the false desperation on the executive’s face when he used Sam’s memory to manipulate a drunk and grieving father. There’s a certain catharsis in knowing what actual desperation looks like on this bastard, and more than a little glee in knowing that he’s the one who put it there. 

Eliot coughs, drawing their attention back to the window. It’s a beautiful view, the river, the pavilion, the cop cars rushing over the bridge, the panic on Victor Dubinich’s sweaty face. 

“Go time,” he orders, but the others are already on their way out, slipping the FBI jackets on as they go. Parker and Sophie are already in the Bering building, Sophie having ditched Dubenich and Parker planting cash throughout the asshole’s office. 

It’s childishly easy to walk in and out again, carrying boxes full of everything they need. Hardison hadn’t even had an issue extracting the incriminating hard drive full of airplane designs. 

When they walk out into a confetti storm of shredded paper, even Nate has to grin. 

“Call him now,” Brigid urges. “I want to hear him _cry_.” 

Nate quirks an eye at his daemon, but supposes some bloodthirstiness is hardly surprising from a bloodhound. 

The phone rings. Finally, there’s a click, and an exhausted voice says, “Yeah?”

“Yeah, you should’ve just paid us,” Nate says. 

“I found the transmitter,” Dubinich protests.

Nate exchanges a smirk with his daemon. “Oh, you found the transmitter with the blinking light, yeah, we wanted you to figure some of it out. Then we just gave you what you were expecting.” 

“I am Victor Dubenich, I am going to beat this,” says Victor Dubenich, who is definitely not going to beat this. 

“Eh, aren’t you forgetting about the bribe?” 

“Who cares? You can’t prove anything, I didn’t get any money.” 

With some truly excellent timing, an FBI agent in the background says, “Bingo!” and Nate knows Parker’s little presents have been found.

“No, it doesn’t account for all of it, Sophie kept a little to buy a truly impressive number of shoes.” Brigid huffs a little, and he knows she’s amused by how much he actually admires Sophie’s elegant footwear. 

“See, if a company’s stock price falls ten, fifteen percent in one day and you see it coming, you sell short, you make a lot of money. If it’s going to fall thirty percent, you can make _shattering_ amounts of money.” 

Brigid bares her teeth and Nate goes for the kill. “We didn’t need the FBI to show up and take you to jail, we just needed them to show up and take boxes out of your office, all day long, in front of TV cameras, scaring your investors. You going to jail is just a bonus. Oh, and say anything to the feds, next time we won’t be so nice.” 

He hangs up the phone and takes a deep breath of the fresh crisp air. Somehow, he has actually lost track of the number of laws he has broken in the last week. It makes him feel guilty for not feeling guilty enough about it. 

But— _how badly do you want to screw the insurance company that let your son die?_ It had worked, because the answer was _extremely._ The manipulative bastard was going to jail, but Sam is still gone, and Blackpoole and the others are still lapping up their enormous salaries guilt-free at IYS. Why should Nate feel guilt when people who have committed far worse crimes— crimes against humanity, against God, against decency, not just crimes against the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission— are at similar parties, guzzling champagne and watching their stock values rise? 

Brigid stretches, flopping her ears and shaking her body out. She nuzzles up against his side. 

“Next time?” she challenges. 

“Seemed like a sufficiently dramatic threat. There won’t be a next time, of course.”

“Of course,” she echoes, her nose twitching. “Was fun, though,”

“Fun wasn’t the point. Justice was the point.”

“ _Revenge_ was the point,” Brigid corrects him. “ _Vengeance_ was the point.” 

Nate shrugs. “Same difference.” 

“Not the same at all, but that doesn’t make it wrong,” she says. Nate is reminded for a moment of their long debates back in seminary. 

“That’s it, though,” he says. “All done. Time to get back to…” he trails off as he remembers how little he has to get back to. His alcohol cabinet, maybe. Brigid’s tail droops.

“We can say goodbye, at least,” she tells him. Her ears flop as she hurries ahead of him, stretching at the tether. 

Ahead, he sees his team— _the_ team— waiting. Hardison, his raccoon draped around his neck, radiates satisfaction. Parker stands so lightly on the ground, she seems to be floating almost as much as her dragonfly. She alternates between darting glances at the others and refusing to look at them at all. Eliot, in contrast, makes no secret of his appraisal of each of the others in turn, while his daemon has already turned to watch Brigid and Nate’s approach. 

And there’s Sophie, looking flawless from those new red heels that cost more than Nate used to make in a week to her well-fitted grey trench coat that perfectly matches the darkest greys in Mel’s feathers. 

Brigid looks over her shoulder. _It’s goodbye_ , she thinks to him, almost viciously. 

“Yeah,” he mutters. “Goodbye.” And he strides forward to take his place in the circle.


	5. Hardison

Alec is trying _really hard_ to be chill, but it’s not easy when he’s holding four checks for enough money to buy the neighborhood he grew up in several times over. 

Sophie, so impeccably put together and always in control, actually _gasps_ when she sees the number. Eliot says nothing, but his fingers tighten around the paper. 

Alec explains, “There was an overlap in the London stock market. Valuation carried over to NASDAQ and—” 

“We’re just very good at what we do,” Leia finishes smugly. She’s right, of course, the others are too busy staring in awe at the checks to listen to an explanation that would probably bore them at the best of times, anyway. The important bit is that they are sufficiently impressed with his mad skills, and for that, the money speaks for itself. 

“This is the score. _The_ score,” Parker and her dragonfly exclaim together. The dragonfly glitters in the sunlight, hovering just above the check.

“Age of the geek, baby,” he says, and beams at all of them. 

“Someone kiss this man so I don’t have to,” Eliot orders, and it’s only the sudden pressure of Leia’s paws on his shoulder that keeps Alec from snapping around to stare at the hitter. 

“So, uh, we’re out, huh?” he stutters, glancing around. “I mean we’re _out_ , this is retirement money. This is ‘go legit and buy an island’ money.” Not that Alec wants to buy an island. It’s way harder to get the latest tech delivered immediately on an island, even if cost is no longer a concern. 

Nate says, “Uh, yeah. Pleasure working with you.” Did Nate’s daemon’s tail wilt a bit as he spoke? It's hard to tell. Bloodhounds are droopy to begin with, after all.

“I already forgot your names,” Parker says again.

 _Lie_ , Leia tells him, but he knows that his daemon is still hurt, after she took a risk to introduce herself the last time. 

Nate opens his mouth like he’s going to say something else, glances down at his daemon, shuts his mouth, and strides through the circle, shoving past Alec to walk down the path. Eliot nods sharply and turns away, his majestic daemon half a step behind him. 

(Eliot’s daemon is always either a half step ahead of him or a half step behind him, Alec has noticed. They never seem to walk side-by-side. There’s probably some hitter self-defense logic behind it, but Alec has no idea what that might be.)

When he looks away from Eliot, the women are gone. He can see the corner of Sophie’s coat disappearing down the road, but Parker has vanished. 

“Alec,” Leia begins.

“It was a walkaway.” 

She ducks away from his hand as he goes to scratch her ears. “It was _supposed_ to be a walkway,” she tells him. “This is the best job we’ve ever had, and not because of the payout. Because of them. We’ve _leveled up_ , Alec, now is not the time to quit. What would we even do with our own island?” 

“It was a walkaway,” he protests again.

Leia hooks her back paws to the backpack strap and twists herself around to look him in the face. “So walk back.”

He blinks at her for another second, then dashes down the path after Nate. He hasn’t had time to prepare a convincing argument, so he settles for the truth. 

“You know, I never had that cool a time on a job.” Is the bloodhound wagging her tail, or is it just moving as she walks?

“It’s a walkaway,” Nate insists, sounding so similar to Alec thirty seconds ago that Leia huffs a laugh into his ear. He barrels on, going for full honesty. 

“And I got focus issues, you kept me right on.” Bloodhounds are much better at sticking to one path than raccoons, who are happy to abandon one trail one something else exciting comes along. But with that kind of focus, who knows what they could accomplish?

“I’m good at one thing,” another voice says, and Alec jumps. Where did Parker even come from? “…only one thing that’s it, but you, you know other things and— and I can’t stop doing my one thing, can’t retire…” Parker’s bouncing nervously in time with the dragonfly’s hovering.

There’s movement to Alec’s right, and he turns to see the huge wolfdog coming towards them, Eliot just behind. The hitter says, “You want to know what I think?”

“Not really,” Nate denies, but the bloodhound’s ears perk up slightly. 

“How long until you fall apart again?” Eliot asks, and wow, that’s actually a pretty good point. Alec had almost forgotten how rough Nate had looked at the start, the way his eyes had looked when he accused Dubinich of using his son.

“Oh, I’m touched,” Nate snarks. 

“Well, a guy like you— a _bloodhound_ like you— can’t be out of the game,” Eliot presses. “That’s why you were a wreck, you need the chase.”

Alec would not have gone there with a ten-foot pole anymore than he would’ve broached the topic of Nate’s dead son the other night, but, well, it’s no surprise that the hitter has more courage than he does.

Nate glances towards his daemon and shrugs. “Yeah, we’ll manage,” he says. 

There’s a sudden burst of birdsong and the bloodhound’s head snaps up. “Mel!” she exclaims, and breaks into a run. The whole group follows her around the bend to see Sophie sitting on a bench, looking as glamorous as any of the red carpet nominees at last year’s Oscars (and Alec would know, he was there). 

Sophie smiles at them, slowly, and rises to her feet. There’s a seduction happening here, and even though it’s not directed at him, Alec’s mouth is dry with the sheer force of her presence. 

“You pick the jobs,” Sophie says.

“My job is helping people,” Nate answers. “I help find bad guys.”

Alec exchanges a glance with Eliot and Parker, and he suspects they are thinking the same thing he is— Nate Ford has chased each of them before, has considered it his duty to catch them. He considers _them_ bad guys.

But Sophie’s taking another approach. She glides up towards Nate, her daemon perched on her shoulder. “Then go find some bad guys. Bad guys have money. Black King, White Knight.”

Nate says nothing, but the bloodhound’s nose twitches eagerly, and Alec knows the battle is won. 

A week later, Alec gets a text from Nate telling him to be at Grand Hope Park in downtown Los Angeles the next. He’s on a plane three hours later. 

Even expecting him, Alec is still startled when Nate Ford strides out of the crowd, his daemon at his side. 

“It would’ve made my job a lot easier five years ago if I had known it were this easy to get you to show up,” Nate quips.

Alec can’t keep his eyes from darting around the crowd, although he had not been quite that naïve— he’s been monitoring Nate’s email, and he’s got internal LAPD alerts synced with his phone, like he does with any city he visits. 

Nate’s daemon nudges at his side and he adds, “Just a joke.” 

“Hilarious,” Alec deadpans. “So, what crimes would you like me to commit today?”

This time, it’s Nate who winces, but it’s gone in a second. 

“I want to make this official,” he says.

“Why, Nathan, is that a proposal?” Alec flutters his eyelashes. “I didn’t know you were interested!” 

Leia giggles. Nate rolls his eyes and hands the hacker an envelope.

“I want _offices_ ,” he explains. “An actual business model. Call it a consulting firm, that can mean anything. I want history, tax records, employee rolls. Make it look legit. Make it _be_ legit. This job is going to require a lot of… research, and I don’t want to wait for you to get into whatever sites you need to each time, so get that all set up in advance, with whatever equipment you need.” 

Alec blinks. He and Leia exchange a look. “That’s not going to be easy,” he says. 

“Or cheap,” Leia adds. 

Nate nods to the envelope. “That should cover it. Anything leftover, put into an expense fund for plane tickets or whatever we’ll need.”

Alec slides a check out of the envelope and can’t keep his eyebrows from rising.

“What?” Nate says. “Don’t think that’ll be enough?”

“Nah,” Alec squeaks. He tries again. “Nah, this should do it. It’s just…” 

“What?” Nate repeats.

“When you commit, bro, you _really commit_ , huh?” Leia says, grinning.

The bloodhound grins back, though the expression is fiercer on her face, more predatory. 

“We’re doing this,” Nate says. He quirks a challenging eyebrow at the check. “Are you in, or should I take that back and find a better computer guy?”

Alec laughs. “Nah, man, I’m in, I’m in. It’ll take some time, even for me, but you won’t find a better tech guy cuz I’m the best.” Leia pokes his cheek and he hastily corrects himself. “ _We’re_ the best. And anyway, we said we were in, right? The things this crew is gonna do? We wouldn’t miss that for the world.” 

“Well, then, get to work. Hardison, Leia.” He nods at each of them in turn, and walks off. 

“We are really doing this, right?” Leia asks. “We’re not just going to disappear with more money than we ever hoped to have, plus that nice extra bonus?” 

Alec hands the check to Leia, who slips it inside their backpack. He thinks about Parker leaping off a building, about Eliot taking down a group of armed men faster than Alec could think _holy shit I’m so screwed_ , about Sophie’s charming voice. He thinks about the way Nate Ford took a heap of information, jiggled it around, and assembled the perfect trap for the mark, and how much he wants to learn how to that. 

“Yeah, baby, we’re in,” he says, and is rewarded with a nuzzle of Leia’s soft face against his neck. 

So Alec, with an enthusiasm and dedication that would astonish nearly all of his former teachers, does his homework. He rents the top floor of an office building and buys the computer setup of his dream, wide screens, touch pads, the fastest hardware on the market with some of Leia’s custom adjustments. He creates White Knight Consultants, Inc., and sets up employee benefits— payroll taxes, pension plans, health insurance, even dental, because Alec Hardison may have never had an office job in his life, but he was raised by a nurse and knows what benefits matter. He hacks the IRS and sets up a paper trail of corporate taxes for the last ninety years, and he leaves the IRS backdoor linked for easy access on the office’s computer. 

Four days in, when Nate texts to say that he wants to call the thing _Leverage Consulting, Inc.,_ Alec only swears for a few minutes before going back to redo all that paperwork. 

Alec's hacked the intelligence agencies before, but it still takes a caffeine-filled weekend to set up their own facial recognition database tied into the CIA, NSA and the FBI. Meanwhile, Leia tackles setting up backdoors into all the major banking systems. Even only trying to view customer information without accessing their accounts directly, it’s a challenge.

Both of them together work to write the code for a heuristic data crawl to search through news sites across the country to find potential clients. Leia cackles a little as they release the crawlers. “Go, my pretties!” she cheers. “Bring me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and I shall punch their problems in the face!” 

Alec, also caffeine-high and sleep deprived, giggles. 

“We did good,” he says, glancing around the offices, trying to imagine how the others will fit into this space. 

She tickles him with her whiskers. “Real good,” she agrees. “I feel like we’re missing something, though. It needs something… personal. Like pictures.”

“A portrait!” Alec says. “Of a founder, or something.” 

“Harland Leverage the Third,” Leia remembers, from the haze two weeks ago of all those interminable decades of taxes they did. 

And because Alec and his daemon have never been ones to hesitate on a good idea, and because Nate deserves some ribbing for changing the damn name after they’d already done a pile of work, they plug a picture of Nate first into an aging program (“see what you’ll look like in thirty years!”) and then into a classical portraiture photo filter. When they aren’t satisfied with the results, and they discover that it is actually midday, they rush to the art supply store and buy canvas and paint. 

The web crawlers bring back a few possibilities. Alec and Leia look over them while the first layer of paint dries. They send the most promising option— a veteran injured by private security who just wants the money for rehab— off to Nate for his review. 

Alec is straightening the portrait while Leia complains about the most miniscule tilt when the phone rings. He steadies the portrait with one hand and reaches into his pocket to snap open his phone.

“Hardison,” Nate orders, “call them in.” There's a click as Nate hangs up, and Alec wonders if he should be annoyed at the rudeness or flattered at the trust, that Nate "Control-Freak" Ford has given him this much responsibility and has faith that he will do as expected.

Leia coughs meaningfully. Alec tosses her the cell phone and shifts the painting another centimeter to the left. 

“Perfect,” she declares. Alec and his daemon grin at each other, and settle down to make some calls, together.

They can't wait to welcome the crew into this space. 


End file.
